Is the Truth Out There? Fables of Abduction, Abdication, and Absolution on the Post-Profession, Pre-Millennial Landscape.

Calderonello, Alice; Shaller, Deb

This paper uses the setting of a "conversation" between Scully and Mulder of the popular "X Files" television program to discuss some current composition theorists and their ideas. The paper muses on the work of Kristie Fleckenstein (who claims there is a "somatic mind" which moves between discursive and corporeal space) and Donna Harraway (who writes of cyborgs) and suggests that their writing is a "kind of specialized performance addressed to a small--if powerful--audience." It also suggests that visualizing existence in terms of dualities such as mental/physical or public/private is problematic and asks whether these theories have any empirical validity. Empiricism is the codification of those few things that are known, although the very act of narrowing and circumscribing a field so that it can be studied carefully limits what a person can "know" and distorts in some ways what will be found. An article by Trainor and Godley is discussed which is an observation of events regarding the removal of a basic writing course at an unnamed state university and the failure to remove a similar course at another state university in the same system. The paper questions whether there is a need to argue theory over practice or practice over theory. (NKA)